Looking to implement an animation marketing strategy for your business? Good thinking. No one likes to see boring marketing materials and a smart animation marketing strategy can help take your marketing to the next level. Animation enables you to combine a powerful targeted story with gorgeous visuals and meaningful color palettes to create videos that resonate with their intended audiences and help turn prospects into customers.
Beyond aesthetics, an animated video improves ROI. It can help your business grow revenue by up to 49%. So how do businesses incorporate animation in their marketing strategies to reach an audience to leave a longer impact? By the time you finish reading this short article, you will have a better idea of which animation marketing strategy works best for your business. But before that, let’s explore the three big questions every business should ask themselves.
3 Key Questions
Plenty of questions will jump into your head once you start developing your animation marketing strategy. Each question may even seem more pressing than the last! However, even before you decide which strategy you should incorporate, there are three significant questions that we feel you should start with.
1: What are you trying to promote?
To make your animation marketing strategy efficient, ask yourself what you are going to promote because not every business should use an animated video strategy. For example, live videos work well for marketing industries like hospitality, real estate, automotive and other sectors, whereas animations tend to perform better for the tech, finance healthcare and other industries where complex products or services are involved.
2: What’s the size of your budget?
Live-action videos usually require equipment, film crews, make-up artists, hiring actors and more. These types of videos can easily run you over $20,000 for something fairly basic. Animation can be more cost-effective but still isn’t necessarily cheap if you use a professional video production company to create your animated videos. It’s always important to strike the right balance between quality and affordability.
3: What does your timeline look like?
Timing is crucial. It’s wise not to opt for an animated explainer video if you have to finish the project in just days. Understand how much time you have to develop your video. Since animation can take a bit longer, live-action might be the smarter choice if you don’t have at least a couple of weeks. Even still, post-production in more complex live-action videos can be time-consuming you’ll want to establish your deadlines with the production company.
Once you get a clear idea about the three questions, it’s time to move ahead with your animation marketing strategy. Here are a few reasons why animation can boost your marketing efforts.
Animation boosts retention
Animation is easy to digest. With compelling storytelling, people are drawn to your marketing messages. Fun characters add to the entertainment factor and make animated videos even more enjoyable.
When people enjoy what they’re watching, they tend to remember more of your message and retain more crucial information. It’s that simple.
A well-written script is the key to a standout startup explainer video. It’s the blueprint for your video and the foundation upon which everything is built. Here’s the dirty little secret: a great script can work even with so-so visuals. Great visuals, on the other hand, won’t save a lousy script. Some people fall in love with a visual style they’re seen, which is fine, but visuals are secondary as we’ll discuss in a bit. Your first and most important task is to craft a compelling story!
It appeals to everyone
Animation is one of the most versatile types of marketing videos. It appeals to virtually everyone, across different demographics and age groups. An animation marketing strategy is guaranteed to be inclusive and reach a broad audience. Competition is fierce these days and you want that type of versatility to cut through the clutter and help your brand stand out.
Animation is budget-friendly
Live-action videos usually require equipment, film crews, make-up artists, hiring actors and more. These types of videos can easily run you over $20,000 for something fairly straightforward and basic. Animation can be more cost-effective and budget-friendly. It still isn’t necessarily cheap if you use a professional video production company to create your animated videos, but you can still likely produce several animated video for the cost of just one live-action production, helping you get much more bang for your buck! Plus, updated an animation is a snap. Updated a live-action video. Not so much!
It doesn’t rely on the hard-sell
Animation is all about storytelling. When you tell a story, you less likely to resort to the hard-sell techniques that you might see on late-night infomercials. Animated marketing videos can feel less like in-your-face advertisements and can increase the likelihood that your target audience actually listens to what you have to sell.
Animations are easily shareable
Today social media platforms have become a critical key for any brand. When you add animations to the content mix, it will combine both social media marketing with your animation marketing strategy.
When shared on all social media channels, an animated video increases engagement rates. It grabs attention and sets your post apart from others among a sea of social media posts. A lively, fun, and engaging animated social post has a high probability that people will want to share it.
Animation gives you complete creative freedom
With an animation marketing strategy, your possibilities are endless. Unless you have a six-figure budget, you likely won’t be able to show pigs flying with live-action. With animation, however, not a problem. You can create any scene, any environment you want. The only limitation is your imagination. Check out this recent example we did for a Houston-area pest control company. Try doing this production (it has been very effective for this business, by the way) with live action!
Animation and explainer videos go together like peanut butter and jelly
One of the most popular tools to use with animation marketing strategy are explainer videos. These enageing videos have become a staple in every marketer’s arsenal these days.
A well-crafted explainer video can help you boost trust and likeability. Explain videos help you you to point out the pain points of your target and grab their attention. You can build emotional connections and increase memorability with these types of videos while telling compelling stories that will resonate with your prospects.
Logo animations make your brand look more professional
You would be surprised to see how much of a lasting impression an animated logo can leave on a viewer. Brand awareness, better engagement, better storytelling are just a few to name. An animated logo is eye-catching, interesting and appealing. It has much more than a boring static logo. It brings branding to life through motion graphics.
A logo animation evokes positive feelings and displays creativity, which is a huge selling point. Your animated logo can be an asset that you use in each and every video you produce and it can become part of your brand image.
Mix live-action with animation? Why not!
There are valid reasons to choose one type of video over the other, but live-action videos and animations can also work great together. This mix can help ensure that you’re striking a balance between creative advertising and marketing to help you stay ahead of the competition. A combination of both makes the video engaging, visually interesting & informative.
While live videos enable you to establish a human connection with your audience, animations help you make visual representations, such as product use cases, features and capabilities, data points, statistics, or technical diagrams.
Results of a well-executed animation marketing strategy
Let’s summarize a bit here. Once you take the plunge and implement a great animation marketing strategy, here’s what you can achieve:
- High client retention
- Animation appeals to audiences of all ages
- Budget-friendly marketing strategy
- Increase brand awareness
- Tell more compelling stories
- Higher engagement rates
- Lasting and memorable impression
- Higher conversion rates
- Entertaining and fun-filled content
- Content can be easily updated without reshoots
Conclusion
You need to make an impact…and quickly. You need to build trust in everything you do and inspire your audience when they land on your media/marketing channels. Now is the time to leverage an animation marketing strategy to engage your audience and get better results for your marketing efforts.
Contact us at Gisteo to discuss your animation goals of overall marketing objectives. Let us plan a perfect animation marketing strategy for you today!
